


Awake My Soul

by thepeopletoomustrise



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-10
Updated: 2013-04-10
Packaged: 2017-12-08 01:33:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/755436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepeopletoomustrise/pseuds/thepeopletoomustrise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Enjolras finally took it all out on Grantaire, the unforeseeable followed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awake My Soul

**Author's Note:**

> fill for the kinkmeme prompt:  
> Shortly after Enjolras has accused Grantaire of being useless and not caring for the cause, Grantaire takes a bullet that was intended for Enjolras. Enjolras and the Amis then nurse him back to health both physically and emotionally.
> 
> More angsty than teary - I'm feeling pretty grumpy today so I figured I'd take things out on these babies.

_“For God’s sake, Grantaire,” Enjolras had hissed, and his voice sunk venomous words into the man he snapped at, who finally put the bottle down to listen, “If you’re going to interrupt my lesson with another drunken argument, just get out now. I’ve been putting up with this for far too long; we all have.”_

_The sleep-deprived and clearly irritable leader had seemingly had enough of the cynic’s doubtful comments, and Enjolras’ capability of being terrible seemed to slip a few words under his skin._

_Grantaire, who usually would shrug his leader’s comments off his back without a second glance, stared at the man, unblinking, fascination brought by the tone of Enjolras’ voice. He meant business._

_“I’m done with your equivocal little comments. You do nothing but sit in that corner and clamp your fingers around the neck of the bottle in this painfully pitiful fashion, and on occasion, bellow words that drip with nothing but dubiety and scorn. You believe in nothing. Why the fuck are you here? For the wine?” Enjolras was gritting his lovely teeth, now, and the pamphlet he was holding in his hand crumpled under an angry fist. “Is this a game for you? To attempt to interpose your cynical, harsh opinions into as many gaps in conversation that you can find? Your opinion is yours to hold, but you throw it at us, mock our ideals – my ideals – and make this cause nothing but a joke.”_

_The drunk stared. Blinked. He was transfixed; not necessarily hurt, but the words were finding themselves under his skin, nestling deep into the soul that had already been kicked too many times before._

_“Enjolras,” Combeferre warned. But the Capability of Being Terrible had a mind of its own._

_“You will not sit and mock myself and my fellow revolutionaries, my fellow soldiers for the cause – I will not allow it. Not for one day more,” his eyes were burning, “will I let this continue. I have told you to learn to control that utterly recalcitrant tongue of yours, or you will no longer be welcome in this atmosphere, among brothers who unite for the Cause. Therefore, you are not welcome until you can be a respectful intellectual. Get the Hell out of here.”_

_The silence in the room was the uncomfortable kind that seemed to lace every particle that floated amongst the room. Enjolras was certainly one to debate, but never one to order the concealment of opinions, of ideas. Grantaire was a different story, though; something within him stirred the Terrible Capability like none other, and the constant mockery and rudeness that he displayed in the Musain did not help._

_“I said, get **out,** ” Enjolras repeated, and the pamphlet fluttered to the ground, a clatter to the silence. “You’re useless, Grantaire, useless! You will never believe in anything but your alcohol, and no one will ever believe in you.”_

_That was when the assailant came through the door, pointing a pistol at the blonde Revolutionary, and the air had stilled in an eerie alarm that left everyone frozen; everyone except Grantaire, who dove valiantly in front of his leader, and let the bullet rip a hole through his abdomen in his place._

X X X

 

Grantaire’s eyes opened and were met by light. Floods of light that invaded the creases of his eyelids with nonexistent politeness, the kind of light that interrupts, intrudes when you least crave for it, when you want nothing but darkness; light that made Grantaire want nothing more but than to roll back over and lose himself in whatever abyss he had been nestled in moments before. It was dark there; still. Life was not moving, and suddenly it was again, with light that scorched his pupils and bled into what he saw.

 

An angelic figure sat in front of his bed, wherever he was lying; the light flooded from behind him and outlined the figure in a hazy glow that made it seem almost impossible for said figure to be human.

 

But, the figure _was_ human, as far as Grantaire was aware.

 

Enjolras.

 

“Grantaire?” was what came from the figure, and the more Grantaire blinked and refreshed his seemingly newborn eyes, the clearer it became that it was indeed Enjolras. Light glowed from his already golden hair and created an outwardly magical aura… “Grantaire, can you hear me?” the fuzzy man came back into focus and he remembered why he was in this damn bed in the first place.

 

He’d been fucking shot.  

 

Grantaire made the noise somewhere between a groan and wheeze, blinking desperately and shifting on papery blankets that made him shudder. He guessed Joly had taken them to the medical center he was learning from.

 

“Hi,” Enjolras said, and Grantaire looked at him. The leader’s normally enviable and rather admirable hair was matted to his forehead with sweat, grimy even from a distance, and the marble cheeks were reflecting the vicious light that had seeped in through the cracks in the door. Were they tears? No, Grantaire dismissed that possibility; not tears, not from Enjolras. “Welcome back,” but now that Grantaire was more aware, he could hear a shudder laden in Enjolras’ words that he had not heard before.

 

The man turned around and reached for something on a wood table next to him; something that looked like a cloth with wiry, cream-colored fabric. He dipped it gingerly in a small bowl, and when he brought it back, it was damp. “Be still,” he entreated quietly, and Grantaire felt the cloth touch his forehead, a cool relief from the burning pile of sweat that was his body.

 

Advice from Enjolras was an order, so Grantaire remained still and let his Apollo dab his forehead in careful strokes with the cloth for moments in silence. He watched him with careful eyes, tired but equally eager to memorize this moment; he studied his face, watched the feathery eyelashes blink in concentration, or the lines on his forehead form into creases, and committed the sight to memory.

 

Grantaire didn’t say anything, though – not yet. Enjolras’ words from before were ringing in his ears, louder than the gunshot.

 

Though he was not necessarily mad – how could one be mad at what he venerated with all of his being? – he was undoubtedly hurt; the words had found their ways into him like salt in a wound. They stung, echoed, danced, and threw a freaking party in his head; all while that very man treated his forehead so gently with the cloth.

 

“Combeferre was worried about your temperature,” the man remarked, as if that explained the situation, and Grantaire didn’t bother to nod.

 

It was quiet again for a short while. Grantaire watched the wall wordlessly; traced it with his eyes and avoided the man who sat in front of him with every fiber of his being, and felt time pass slower than he would have liked it to.

 

After a bit of uncomfortable, drawn out silence, Grantaire moved his gaze to the man and felt his muscles in his abdomen radiate a dull, hollow ache, “You will say something, won’t you?” His voice was raspy and grated on his vocal chords.

 

“And what would you have me say?” his eyes flickered once, and then the light died; he looked away from Grantaire, which made the situation even tenser than before. He did not have an answer to that one, so he shifted in his blankets, and his eyes drew to the lump of a bandage under his shirt that wrapped around his abdomen in an unsightly fashion. Self-consciousness poked him in the back.

 

“Something.”

 

Grantaire’s eyes left Enjolras again and found their way back to the outline on the floor. He coughed a few times and a pain snaked its way from his chest and bloomed into his stomach like a wildfire. He shuddered.

 

This caught Enjolras’ attention, and the chair he sat in creaked as he adjusted his own position, “You didn’t have to do that,” was all he said next, in a voice that seemed very foreign to the speech-delivering voice Grantaire had previously committed to memory.

 

“Well, fuck, Enjolras; I did.”

 

The bite in Grantaire’s already pain-laced tone stung Enjolras, and he felt his heart pound in the cavern that was his chest, which he believed was the only thing preventing it from leaping out completely.

 

Enjolras lifted his eyes only momentarily, and his voice trembled with quiet words that were simple in structure heavy in meaning, “Thank you.”

 

There was a quiet that filled the room, but this one was certainly not as uncomfortable as the last. It was a light one that blanketed the men in a silent agreement, a silent forgiveness, and Grantaire used the moment to inhale sharply and gather his bearings. His breath pierced his lungs, and the fiery pain once again crawled with angry claws along his body.

 

“Are you in pain?” Enjolras asked, a response to Grantaire’s twitch in the bed.

 

“I’m fine,”

 

“You’re not fine.”

 

“But I am,” Grantaire quipped, “Your revolutionary zeal does not go so far as to change my own body’s feelings, thank you.” He wheezed.

 

“Even after being shot, you will not let me have the final say…” And when Grantaire looked back at the man who sat at his bedside, there was a trace smile that hung at his lips; a hesitant smile that seemed to be perched on the fence between pity and care. “I meant what I said.”

 

“You’ve said,” a wheeze, “a lot of things.”

 

“I meant it, the thank you,” he shifted in his chair, uncomfortable with venturing outside of his seemingly nonexistent emotional range, but didn’t back down. “That was not an attempt to feign amends. I am truly grateful for your saving my life.”

 

“I’m sure your schoolboys appreciate it too,” Grantaire said, and he watched as Enjolras fiddled nervously with the cloth he still held in his hands.

 

“Grantaire…”

 

“Don’t,” he cut him off and gave him a feeble, sick shake of the head, “Don’t pretend like you’re here because you want to be. I have a damn bullet in my stomach so Combeferre has guilt you into giving me some sort of artificial apology so you will be able to maintain your martyr status,” he leaned his head back with a sigh that rippled pain along his side, “I hurt and I’m tired.”

 

“I know you are. And that’s why I’m here,” he said, and his words remained quiet, humble, and raw. “I didn’t mean what I said to you.”

 

“You did. I know you did, because it’s true.”

 

The blonde shook his head insistently, “I did not. I’m sorry, Grantaire. That was harsh and uncalled for, and I shouldn’t have… I just did not have the patience. That was all it was. The words I spoken had no meaning to them, as they were only sprouted out of irritability.”

 

Grantaire sighed again, shutting his eyes for a moment, trying feebly to crawl back into the world of darkness he had hidden successfully in before he woke up, but to no avail. Opened eyes revealed Enjolras still sitting there, cloth twisted in his hands, sweat in beads above his eyebrows.

 

“I believe in you, Grantaire,” he murmured, quiet but earnest. “There is truth in that.”

 

Grantaire listened. He heard. Absorbed. Let the words seep into him like ink tattooed into his body, and they seemed to overwrite part of what his Apollo had said earlier. Not the entire scar was covered, but a good portion. Grantaire looked back at him.

 

“You’re damn lucky I stepped in front of you. A softie like you…” he grunted, sweating from pain, “…wouldn’t have been able to handle it.”

 

Enjolras laughed and took his hand. There was an acceptance there. A truce.

 

Healing took baby steps after all.

 

 

 


End file.
